The Hunterian

Rediscovering John Singleton Copley’s Richard Brocklesby: an American portrait of notable associate of William Hunter
Friday 4 January 2019
11.00am
Hunterian Art Gallery 
Admission free - no booking required

Join Hunterian Deputy Director Mungo Campbell for this final event in the Hunter series and find out more about an important new acquisition – a painting thought to have been lost for almost 80 years. The portrait of physician Richard Brocklesby (1722-1797) by American artist John Singleton Copely (1738-1815) was thought to have been destroyed in an air-raid in 1940. Known only through an engraving made at the time of Brocklesby’s death in 1797, the picture passed through his family and was left to The Hunterian by Nicholas Phillipson, the Edinburgh-based historian of the Scottish Enlightenment, who died in January 2018. 

Copley’s portrait of Brocklesby is a beautiful example of the American artist’s work in London around the time of his election as a Royal Academician in 1783. Brocklesby, a Quaker, was a school friend of Edmund Burke, a protégé of the Royal Physician Richard Mead, and a friend and physician to both John Wilkes and Samuel Johnson. Brocklesby and Hunterian founder Dr William Hunter lived and worked as contemporaries within the same close circles in London and several of Brocklesby’s published works are still a part of Hunter’s library collections.

First published: 19 December 2018